The presented invention relates generally to a locking device for an umbrella, and particularly to an anti-missrelease and automatic locking safety device for an automatic opening umbrella which, in addition to obviating embarassing events such as touching another person's body or damaging articles by the umbrella due to its improper or unexpected opening, the safe locking condition is automatically achieved whenever the actuation force on the operating button is released, while just supplying a slight force against the button in forward and downward directions, the unlocking of the locking device according to the presented invention will be achieved.
The structure of a conventional automatic opening umbrella (hereinafter referred to as the automatic umbrella) is shown in FIG. 1. If it is desired to make it open automatically, a button 2 is depressed along the direction perpendicular to the handle 1 (i.e. the direction shown by the arrow A in the drawing), thus making the retaining plate spring 3 pivotally installed about point 33 rotate slightly clockwise. This leads the retaining claw 32 at the forward end of the retaining plate spring 3 to disengage from a coupling with a lower notch cylinder 4. The lower notch cylinder 4 is then moved to the right as shown in this figure by through its correction with the originally built-in frame structure (not shown in the drawing) to attain the function of automatically opening the umbrella.
Since this kind of conventional automatic umbrella can be automatically opened by a slight downward push along the direction of arrow A even after the umbrella is closed and packed, this may occur when the user is riding on a bus or is at any public place crowded with people, or if the push button is unexpectedly pushed by the user himself or by others the umbrella will automatically open and thus the partly opened umbrella will certainly touch a nearby person. Although this may not hurt the person is touches, it is still imaginable this will give rise to some embarrassing, and unhappy circumstances especially during rainy days when the cloth of the umbrella is wet.
To prevent the above misadventure, many kinds of lock devices have been provided, wherein after the umbrella is packed up, an additional operation must be made to engage a lock device against the push button 2 or the retaining plate spring 3. When it is desired to open the umbrella, a further operation is needed to unlock the lock device, and thereafter depress the push button to make the umbrella automatically open. Evidently, this is quite troublesome in opening or packing up the umbrella, thus completely losing the simple and convenient merit of an automatic umbrella.